Teaching the Slider

In the middle of life’s road, which I notice
keeps getting wider,

he asks me to show him a slider.
Bankrupt, filled with rage, and now caught

on the phone with a merciful woman who isn’t his mother,
I slam the phone down,

order him to the backyard,
and pitch. Don’t push off, separate

because it’s how you separate yourself from the mound,
it’s all in the follow-through.

I come straight over the top.
They break smoothly, cleanly.

Once I broke them off and they fell
like knives outlining my victims.

Baseball’s a game played sideways, I say.
He tries, is all legs and arms. His hands

half the span of mine, sneaks untied,
he’s a present coming unwrapped. No,

youre not coming all the way through.
You need to fall through your body

as if it weren't there. You need to plunge
down the steps your legs and back make

and then the ball will break
and fall off the end of the world

no matter what and after that
your body can burst into flames

for all I care and I come through
and the ball cracks his glove, knocks it off.